It has been revealed that Facebook’s free Wi-Fi app feature is coming to everyone. It is coming right now, you may already have the feature available. Why be a buzz kill? Everyone loves free Wi-Fi, right?
Unfortunately, yes, everyone does love free Wi-Fi. Including some rather notorious individuals. Read on to discover more about Facebook’s free Wi-Fi, and how to protect yourself if you choose to use it.
Using Facebook’s free Wi-Fi
Using this new tool from Facebook is easy enough. It is called Find Wi-Fi, and is available is an easy-to-use app:
To quote Facebook’s themselves:
“Find Wi-Fi helps you locate available Wi-Fi hot spots nearby that businesses have shared with Facebook from their Page. So wherever you are, you can easily map the closest connections when your data connection is weak.”
When you open up the app you are shown a variety of free Wi-Fi connections near you. This typically means coffee shops, and other public Wi-Fi. This allows you to quickly find a Wi-Fi connection when you need one. This can be useful for traveling… Or for those who want to do Facebook Live. You know that they were not doing this entirely altruistically.
The problem with Facebook’s free Wi-Fi
The problem with Facebook’s free Wi-Fi is the same problem that there is with all free Wi-Fi in the world. That problem is that you do not control the network, or know who does. This means that hackers can set up free Wi-Fi. They can then use it to steal your information, such as:
- Banking details
- Passwords
- Private communications
- Work communications
- Photographs you send
I do not doubt for a second that hackers are hearing about Facebook’s free Wi-Fi and looking for ways to get their fake Wi-Fi included on it. More than anything, hackers love big crowd that is vulnerable. With the perceived trust of Facebook listing these free Wi-Fi access points, hackers should have a field day.
Protecting yourself when using Facebook’s free Wi-Fi
There is no doubt about it, you need to protect yourself when you use Facebook’s free Wi-Fi tool. There is no way that Facebook can guarantee that a free lot Wi-Fi listed on their app isn’t malicious. You need to protect yourself with encryption using a VPN app.
These apps will make it so that the hackers who do set up malicious free Wi-Fi will not be able to read what you are sending. The encryption that these tools used will make your communications illegible. Everything will be scrambled in the hackers will not be able to read but they steal from you.
Other good practices include not connecting too sensitive apps or websites while you were on a network which you do not control. You need to minimize your risk until you get back home to your network which you control. VPN will certainly protect you, but why not give yourself extra peace of mind?
To keep learning more about this topic, see our post on the dangers of free Wi-Fi!